SETI

Curran, David

The most sophisticated of cellular phone systems really is useless “unless the call goes through”. So goes the Bell Atlantic Mobil Systems advertisement. Contact is, of course, essential to communication. Somewhat over twenty years ago, a most unusual “call went through”. Actually, it’s still going through and the intention is, at least, for it to continue to do so for the next 25,000 years, before contact may be made. But if contact is the essential first step to communication, who’s there to contact, wherever “there” may be? Who knows?

And that’s the point of this most unusual call. The “point” is, in fact, known as SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Beamed from the massive deep space radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, toward a cluster of millions of stars called M13, the encoded “call”, when deciphered, creates a pattern of binary information describing the chemical structure of earth life and details essential to locating our solar system.

At the heart of SETI is an atheistic, even anti-God concept: life on earth is not a miracle, it’s simply a statistic. It “just happened” here, so why not there, again wherever “there” may be? This “concept” has been the driving force for extensive outlays of funds and sophisticated searches; the most recent of them is the current ten year NASA SETI program. Using “cutting edge” computer and electronics technology, radio telescopes around the globe have been linked to monitor up to a billion radio frequencies simultaneously “around the clock”, emanating from outer space to earth. Why? An Extraterrestrial Intelligence may just have a “call coming through” to us; contact can, of course, only be made if we “pick up the phone”.

From the first SETI project, OZMA, in 1960 to the most recent, TOPS (Toward Other Planetary Systems), the best of scientific intellects and resources have been focused on attempts to contact and communicate with intelligences beyond the bounds of our solar system. That would prove the phenomenon of “spontaneous abiogenesis” or, in simpler language: life “just happens.” Contacts to date? Successes to date? None: none whatsoever.

So, is something wrong? Yes. Tragically wrong. The “Extra Terrestrial Intelligence”, The God who “fills the heavens” has spoken, and in the words of Solomon, “yet man perceives it not.” Despite the most intense of scientific endeavors, the opening words of His communication remain majestically untarnished: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” No! Life didn’t “just happen”.

Modern astronomy and cosmology have produced a rather daunting array of names to describe celestial real estate: super novas, pulsars, quasars, red giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. However, all agree that none of them could even remotely support life. So how about planets? Why of course life must subsist on a planet. Would it surprise you, then, to know only two or possibly three planets are, at the moment, known to exist outside our solar system?

Recently discovered, those planets were reported in the fall of 1994. Located in the constellation Virgo, they orbit a rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar. So, if this is the only known real estate option in the universe that may support “Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, would it? No. The planetary environment of total darkness, minus a few hundred degrees, and devastating blasts of radiation from the pulsar would immediately dismiss any notion of life support as absurd.

While evolutionary theory espoused as “gospel” in the classroom, really requires a universe suffused with “Extra Terrestrial Intelligence”, rest assured, none has been heard from, nor has a reasonable place where they may live been located. About that “most unusual call”, It may “go through”, but no one’s there to pick up the phone. In fact, “there” may not even be there. “And God created man in His own image.” That is intelligent life located here on planet earth. Man is a unique creation from the hand of God. The Bible asserts that and scientific evidence fully supports it.

So where’s Solis Lacus? That’s the location of Martian world government. Martian world government? Such notions were once taken quite seriously The famed American astronomer, Percival Lowell, was probably most prominent in promoting evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Building on an inverted pyramid of faulty deductions, details of Martian life received prominent press from his imaginations near the turn of the previous century. But the Mariner satellite missions in the 60’s quickly buried any lingering hopes of finding intelligent life on Mars.

Nothing daunted, however, the press infused a tension of expectation during the Viking missions in the 70’s as the search for at least primitive life on Mars intensified. Time magazine fairly glowed: “How many times does Columbus arrive in history? …. We are a privileged generation.” Life was to be transformed from a miracle to a statistic as complex experiments were to be performed on Martian soil by the Viking lander in its search for living organisms. The glitz attending the missions quietly ebbed as reality set in. If the purpose of the Viking missions was to prove life or even its building blocks existed on the Red Planet, it was an abject failure.

So is SETI pointless? Having neither Hubble telescope nor Viking lander, the Psalmist “considered the heavens”. Yet his insight reveals a breadth of understanding beyond that of the princes of modern astronomy. With neither speech nor audible voice, the heavens “declare the glory of God”. Search for “Extraterrestrial Intelligence”? No.

There is nothing to search. The heavens are proclaiming the “handiwork” of The Divine Intelligence. Consider the message!

The Psalmist did, and it charged his heart with worship: “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” Central to that message is the glory of God. In the overwhelming grandeur of the heavens, “the work of His fingers”, is the declaration of Deity, purpose and design. No need to search. “God only wise”, the God of glory has spoken.